Family members of three of the 10 Black victims who were murdered in the Buffalo grocery store shooting last May have filed a sweeping civil lawsuit against several Big Tech companies, a gun parts manufacturer, a body armor manufacturer, and the parents of the shooter.
The Social Media Victims Center, The Law Offices of John Elmore, and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence filed the suit in the New York Supreme Court Friday morning on behalf of shooting survivor Latisha Rogers and the loved ones of shooting victims Heyward Patterson, Katherine “Kat” Massey, and Andre MacKneil.
MacKneil was a father of five who was at Tops Friendly Markets on May 14, 2022, to buy a birthday cake for his 3-year-old son’s birthday party. Massey was a community activist and retired teacher. Patterson was a deacon at State Tabernacle Church of God and a retired security guard.
Rogers was an assistant office manager at Tops and hid behind the counter of the service desk when the shooting started. When she called 911 and whispered to the dispatcher that the store was under attack the dispatcher hung up on her. That day marked the second time she survived a mass shooting.
The 142-page suit targets the parent companies of Google, Facebook, Reddit, Snapchat, 4Chan, and Twitch for fostering and furthering white supremacist propaganda and rhetoric on their social platforms while also giving Payton Gendron an outlet to live stream the violent spree.
Gendron murdered 10 Black people and injured three others in a shooting rampage at the Tops supermarket in East Buffalo. Gendron, who was 18 at the time, pleaded guilty in November of that year to the 10 murders and a number of hate crime charges. He also became the first person in the state of New York to be charged with domestic terrorism motivated by hate, for which he also pleaded guilty. He was sentenced this past February to life in prison with no possibility of parole.
Gendron publicized his…
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